The Best of Penny Dread Tales (22 page)

Today, the Sun Sets in the East

Peter J. Wacks

Everything that I’m doing has been done before. This is not a new tale, nor even an uncommon one. What makes it unique is me, and what makes it stand out in my life is the where and when of how it happened. Well, that and the clockwork Muay Thai army.

Let me start with an introduction. My name is the Hummingbird. The name I was born to isn’t so important, when compared to the name I’ve earned.

So what kind of name is the Hummingbird? A damned fine one, by my reckoning. Most men might take offense at a name that, which at its most basic means faster than the human eye can track. Can you imagine it? Walking into your local saloon and having the girls squealing “hey, hummingbird!” to you? Tiny and fast, that’s me. I take my pride where I find it.

Truth be told, though, I got the name for my gun slinging. I’m a small target, only five-foot-eight plus skinny as a boy, and I can draw my Colt, shoot six separate targets, then reholster in under two seconds. That’s with my left hand. Now, I’m right handed, but for a long time I didn’t have a right arm to sling with. I lost it to a piece of artillery in the last year of the Great War when I was nineteen years old. I didn’t get it replaced till I was a man of twenty-six, a good ten years ago.

The standard replacement arms you see in the West tend to be big bulky things, all clockwork and pistons, and about twice the size of a normal limb. I went to the Orient for mine. Some clever Chinaman combined clockwork with this needle thing they have in the East called acupuncture. That’s the arm I got me. The plate that attaches to my arm covers my shoulder and chest, from my neck all the way to the bottom of my ribcage on the right side. All told, there are one thousand, four hundred and twenty needles stuck into my body under those plates. Each one connects with a little metal thread to internal workings in my arm. All those little threads lay over each other and make mechanical muscles, which are a sight stronger than a normal muscle.

So, instead of clockwork and steam inside me, I have a few cogs for articulation and all them little wires laying over each other, coated with overlaying little steel plates for skin. They call it dragon scaling. The healing and learning to use the thing took a lot longer than I expected at that age. Afore I was allowed to have the arm put on, I had to spend a year doing this funny moving thing they call Tai Chi.

I figured at first it would drive me crazy, me being The Hummingbird and having to move so damned slow. But there is a peace to be found in it, at the center. In being so slow, I found out how to be even faster. Of course, once I got the arm, I took another two years of training afore the pain stopped and my body didn’t hurt no more.

The way my teachers said it, I was a master of that path by the time I left, but I reckon there ain’t no such thing as a true master of Tai Chi. Got pretty good with my fists though, and I keep my hand in it, practicing every day, learning, getting better.

I paid for my arm by bounty hunting. Didn’t matter none that I was in the Orient, they still have criminals there. Where there is crime there is always a lawman willing to put good money down to not have to do the dirty work of catching outlaws their damned selves. Which finally gets me away from rambling about my past, and brings us to the present. I had plenty of money saved for my return to the West, and was just awaiting a few last things I had commissioned. I had to run down a last few bounties for the cash to pay for them.

Most of my work came from the police hub in Guangzhou, known by us Gwailo as Canton. Guangzhou is about a three- or four-hour ride inland from Hong Kong, or about twenty-five minutes on an airjunk. Now, I do a lot of trading and buying in Hong Kong, but Guangzhou is the administrative seat of the province, so it’s naturally where I get my work and pay from.

I chose to avoid the Offices of Colonial Secretary in Hong Kong. The Brits charge you once to get assigned to a bounty, and then charge again, a private fee straight to the Secretary’s pocket, once you brought a bounty back in. The Chinese just care about getting the criminals brought in. Regardless, the two cities being so close was damned convenient, and I generally stuck close to them. I liked saving the time of long rides all over.

Why not just take the airjunks between the two? Well, I suppose that cutting down the trip to half an hour or so would be nice, but it didn’t seem worth the cost of three Pesos for just a couple hours saved. I refuse to carry Wen, since you have to string a thousand of them together to get any value. Instead, I carry mostly Pesos. Pesos are made from silver, and for the last decade or so lots of the Chinamen had been favoring them like me. They have a high enough silver content that you can get value for a Peso near anywhere in the world.

My thoughts were definitely on Pesos that day, hoping that I’d get lucky enough to find a bounty worth twenty or thirty of them and help pay for the guns I was having custom made in Hong Kong. My Colts are great shooters, but with how fast my right arm reacts, they just can’t rechamber rounds as fast as I can shoot them.

So with my thoughts on a new pair of pistols, I rode up to the Magistrate’s office and dismounted, letting my steed run the stable yard while I walked inside. The building was tall for the area, a full five stories, but still built with those curvy roofs Easterners seem so fond of.

I walked in, tipping my hat to constable Baojia, an old friend here at this office, while he bowed slightly to me and flashed a pearly-toothed smile. I flicked the brim of my Stetson, eyeing Baojia. “You’re smiling friend. You have something good for me today?”

“We see, Gwailo.” He grinned again. “Is two thousand Peso bounty.” He raised an eyebrow at me.

Well. Ain’t that just a bitch? Two thousand is some good money, and highly irregular. Usually, the Chinese government paid in Wen, and I’d have to take them down the street to get them converted to something less bulky. I sucked in a breath between my teeth and thought. Two thousand was also some mighty dangerous hunting. “Alright. Give me the details.”

Baojia raised an eyebrow and tossed a folder onto the counter. Great. I never did get none too good at reading. I sighed pointedly, getting my message across, and scooped up the folder. Flipping it open, I painfully made my way through the reading.

Hm. Chang Yao Jin, also known as Tiger, was at large. I had tracked him down about six years ago, when I was a lot less careful, still full of the vim and vigor of youth. Last time I had missed bringing him in, though. I ran down all his hideouts, but someone else got to him first. Looks like he had escaped from a prison in Nanning. Well, no wonder ’twas so much money to bring Tiger in.

He was too well connected, with a network stretching from Hai Noi, Annam, all the way down to Bangkok, Siam. I grinned a bit. This was gonna be fun. Over the years he had been caught fourteen times, with bounty hunters rustling out five of his six biggest hidey-holes. Now me, I got lucky. I found two of his hidey-holes, but he was already caught when I showed up at the first one I’d decided to check on.

I glanced up to Baojia. “Yup. I’m reckoning I know where he is. How many other people you got on this?”

“Six, Gwailo. All good boys from China.” “Good boys from China” from Baojia meant scumbags from around the world, hiding here hunting bounties instead of getting caught themselves at home. I had earned his trust by the simple expedient of being honest with the man and not getting arrested myself.

“Mhm.” I showed him some teeth. “That’s why you’re handing it to me, eh? Cause none of them as is tracking Tiger has a shot in hell of bringing him in for you.”

Baojia looked sternly at me and snorted. “Good Chinese boys! They succeed!” He leaned close to me. “I have five hundred Wen bet on you, Hummingbird. You go now. Go get him.”

I patted my friend on the shoulder then walked out, glancing at the file again. Baojia had left a handwritten note scrawled on the backside of the bounty sheet that said Khon Kaen. ’Twas the same thing I had been thinking. Khon Kaen was the one place Tiger had that no other bounty hunter had ferreted out yet. I pulled the wanted poster from the rest of the paperwork, shoving that one page in my pocket.

Walking out to the stable yard the warm morning sun greeted me, promising a beautiful day of travel. I grabbed my nag from the yard, shoving the rest of the paperwork in my saddlebags, and rode around town for a while, making sure I wasn’t being followed.

It’s a pesky necessity, but when you pick up a bounty, there’s plenty of vultures out there who’ll just tail you, let you do the work, then steal the catch as you bring them in. Afore you get to asking, yeah, I learned that one the hard way. I was twenty-nine, and should have known better, but now I have a nice scar on the back of my head to remind me to beware of vultures.

Once I was sure that no vultures were on me, I headed down to the port to catch an airjunk to the kingdom of Vientaine, which bordered Siam right near Khon Kaen. ’Twas a much faster route than junking all the way down to Bangkok. Siam had been getting pretty industrial since about the same time the Great War was over in the States, but the junks pretty much all flew in to the capital, then you had to train ride anywhere else in the country. Right now, my fastest route would be Vientaine and a couple hours ride south. I pulled my reins up, riding carefully into the port. There was a lot of foot traffic for the flights today.

Airjunks are a mighty feat of engineering. Over in the States and Europe the airships are basically sailing vessels with balloons and a couple clockwork-powered propellers on them. Massive steam engines fill the aft decks, piping hot air up to the balloon bladders. While the philosophy is basically the same over here, the execution of them isn’t.

The sailing junk has one massive segmented sail at the front, whereas the flying junk has two that are rolled up along the side, and two tiny ones up front. Once the lift bladder starts to pull the ship up into the air, the two sails snap out and get all rigid, like a pair of bat wings. The main bladder vents hot air, and the ship literally glides through the air. It has twin propellers attached to either side of the back of the hull, but much smaller than the side ones used in the West. The whole thing is powered by clockwork and steam, which makes a mighty smooth and fast sail through the skies.

The particular airjunk I boarded was red, with a dragon painted on the hull above the wings. As my nag trotted up the gangplank to the main deck, I glanced left, then right, again, one last check to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I wasn’t. I paid the chunayaun, he’s the fella that takes money for the ride and is so called because he works for the bank, not the ship, and trotted my horse to the stable at the back of the junk. I reined her in amongst the half dozen or so other horses and took up leaning against the back rail of the airjunk where I could keep an eye on the rest of the riders.

Mostly ’twas business folk all huddling up at the front, talking to each other about the various dealings they’d be having in Vientaine or Siam. But one fella stood out. For one, he was Nipponese instead of a Chinaman, and he stood a solid five eleven, maybe six feet tall. He was wearing a kimono that was such a dark grey as to almost be black. Even with the silk robes draped over him, you could tell he was built heavy on muscle. His skin and face looked young and strong, but there was just a hint of silver at the temples of his close-cropped black hair. On his left hip he wore a katana set, and on the right, none other than my favorite pistol, a Colt Peacemaker.

That in itself was a bit of a surprise. The Peacemaker had been around for about ten years or so now, but since it was a U.S. government pistol mainly, ’twas a rare sight to see. I had a sinking feeling I was gonna be seeing more of this gent in Siam. Spend a few years hunting bounties, and sure enough you’ll learn to spot the other folk who do the same.

The airjunk trip was mainly uneventful, and I spent the better portion of it watching my friend at the front. If you think you’re gonna go at odds with someone, I highly recommend taking the time to learn how they move, if the opportunity provides itself. I had plenty of opportunity, as most of the trip is just sailing the skies over the south China Sea, and even the bit where we pass over the pearl cliffs of Hainan is near enough the straights that it’s over in just a couple of minutes. Since I took the express to Vientaine, we didn’t even stop in Ha Noi.

What that means to a man staring down at the scenery is lots and lots of mountains covered in jungle, with the occasional rice paddy field cleared out by the folks driven off the flatlands and fighting for a bit of peace on their piece of land. Soon enough, ’twas all over, and we were landing in Vientaine, at the airyard on the southern outskirts.

I waited at the stable on the junk, letting my nag nuzzle on my hand whilst I patted her head and allowed for all the business folk to get off first. When you’re in another man’s house, you respect his rules. These folk who constantly rode back and forth on the airjunks paid the bills for the ship’s captain, so I felt ’twas only right to respect their travels afore my own. The Nipponese fella did the same, waiting by me with his horse.

We both mounted up and headed off the airjunk together, though I let him lead the way. Once we were out of the yard, French soldiers checked our papers, careful to not let us grubby mounted folk get their snappy white and blue colonial uniforms dirty, then cleared us on our way. Personally, I’m rather fond of the French, what with all that fundraising they’re doing to build us Americans a big ole statue dedicated to freedom and liberty. I’ve seen pictures of her head on show in Paris, and it’s mighty impressive looking. Plenty of folk around the world don’t like them though. Most people felt that the only thing worse than the French colonial empire was the British royal empire. Heh.

Regardless, me and the Nipponese fella soon left the French and Vientaines long behind, trotting silently next to each other as we made our way down from the highlands into Siam. As each road split off, headed to other provinces, it became more and more clear that we had the same destination in mind.